


with tourniquet and prayer

by spacestationtrustfund



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Torture, also I took the canon ages and laughed in their faces, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4514721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enhanced, controlled, manipulated, and destroyed. Natalia Romanova is sixteen when she meets the Winter Soldier. The relationship formed is surprising and dangerous, and it hurts her to remember. Her past is as sharp as a knife and twice as deadly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1. The Beginning

_I’m a fly that's trapped_  
_In a web_  
_But I'm thinking that_  
_My spider's dead_  
_Lonely, lonely little life_  
_I could kid myself_  
_In thinking that I’m fine_

(Panic! at the Disco, “Always”)

 

 

 

The first time he sees her she must only be barely sixteen, but already she carries with her a powerful aura of confidence and ability that he’ll never be able to replicate. She’s training without weapons that say, against at least half a dozen grown men, whirling and kicking like a barely controlled hurricane. She brings one man to the floor by leaping and wrapping her legs around his neck, then dropping into a practised cartwheel and using her victim as a human weapon against the rest. He admires her skill.

He congratulates her afterwards, once her opponents are recovering and she’s standing off to the side waiting to be told what to do next. Petrovitch is on the other side of the room, so he considers it safe to talk to her uninterrupted. ‘You’re extremely fast, even for a Black Widow,’ he says in English.

Her eyes flicker up to lock onto his from beneath a curtain of burgundy hair. ‘ _Ya ne podkhodit dlya vas_ _,_ ’ she says, deliberately speaking in Russian—taunting him, testing him. _I am no match for you._

The returned praise is surprising, although he suspects she’s testing him, observing his every move with her fierce dark eyes. If she wants to speak Russian, then let it be that. He asks her name, letting the question roll off his tongue smoothly as the icy water from the Russian streams.

She answers in the same language, her tone perfectly regulated. Her control is impressive, even over her own tongue and tone, her own words which he knows are not hers at all. ‘Natalia Alianova Romanova.’

The willingness of the fact that she gives her full name is unnerving; he realises that it is because she fully believes that he is no threat to her. He is controlled by Petrovitch in the same way that she is, and not one of his charges would dare to willingly harm another. She would probably beat him in a fight, if they were given no weapons. He knows better than to challenge her, or to think that her disclosure of her name signifies any kind of trust.

‘Ah, _Zimniy Soldat_ _._ I see you have met my little Slavic Shadow. She is a piece of fire, is she not?’

Petrovitch’s voice cuts coldly and clearly from across the room as he walks over to stand beside them. The abrupt change in Natalia is astonishing: All the life vanishes from her eyes, she automatically straightens, and her hands clench into fists as her head hangs. It is obvious that she is owned, and not the mistress of her own will.

He can understand, sympathise, even; all of the power and fluidity and grace he’s seen contained in this girl is the property of Ivan Petrovitch. She has no choice, no will except that of her handler’s, her trainer’s. She is not a free person. She cannot make her own decisions. She is contained entirely by Ivan Petrovitch.

‘She is one of my finest,’ Petrovitch boasts, putting his hand on the top of her head as if she is a dog, mute until he commands her otherwise. ‘She will be ideal once she completes her training. Right, Natalia?’

‘ _Da, Ser_ _,_ ’ Natalia answers immediately in Russian, the formal affirmative falling easily from her full lips. She is clearly beautiful, and he wonders of Petrovitch has sold her beauty yet or is keeping it for himself. Either possibility is a likely one.

‘You may speak English, if you wish,’ Petrovitch says carelessly, and Natalia repeats herself at once, this time in English.‘You will be training with _Zimniy Soldat_ soon enough. He will teach you more weaponry, to hone your abilities.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Natalia echoes, her voice choked with obedience.

Petrovitch smiles languidly. ‘You’re a good girl.’

The effect those simple words have on her is instantaneous: Every muscle in her body seems to relax, her chin lifts up with a new reassurance, her eyes dissolve into dark pools of excitement, and her mouth curves into a smile. Every movement she makes is abruptly validated by the brief praise. He cannot blame her; he too longs for the freedom of such words. The transformation is fascinating to watch. She has gone from a dumb slave into a happy child in an instant.

It scares him, what words can do, how much power they have over people. He doesn’t want them to have that power over him. He doesn’t want anything to have that kind of power.

 

***

 

The idea of training her is a daunting one, given what he’s seen her do unarmed, but she turns out to be an eager and focused pupil. ‘I have not learned knives as well,’ she tells him when he’s showing her how to hold the blade before she throws. Her English is unaccented, slightly slower than her Russian, but her language skills are plainly well-developed. There seems to be no end to what she can do.

‘You’ll learn,’ he responds, handing her the knife handle-first. She hurls it towards the target; the blade sticks, but several centimetres away from the centre of the target, vibrating faintly.

Her hands immediately fly to her shoulders, hugging herself as she stumbles away from him, eyes wide and empty, hollows of fear. ‘I’m sorry!’

‘It’s fine,’ he says quickly, but she doesn’t relax; she’s almost literally shrunken into herself, terror etched on her face. ‘That’s why I’m teaching you,’ he adds, then he understands: ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Natalia.’ She shrinks away, still terrified, and a sickening feeling starts to fight with his impassivity. It’s obvious that she’s been beaten, tortured, punished for making mistakes. Looking at her— _lips parted, eyes wide, face pale_ —the thought makes him angry.

‘It’s fine,’ he tries again, this time more firmly, ‘you didn’t do anything wrong. You can try again, understand? Until you get it right. Try again.’

It’s as if the fact that she’s been given a direct command is the trigger; she moves fluidly back into position, expression determinedly neutral, eyes filling with concentration. She wordlessly continues with the exercise, refusing to remove her gaze from the target. Not one of her knives misses the centre.

The next time she reacts in a similar way, even commands don’t restore her. This time they’re working on life-sized practice dummies, finding every kill point possible to reach with only hands. She’s supposed to be using only her fists, but after multiple failed attempts at hitting the side of the neck, she growls in frustration and flips into a spinning kick. The edge of her boot takes of the dummy’s head and sends it flying in a burst of sawdust. She drops to the ground triumphant, but almost instantaneously her eyes cloud over. ‘Please don’t punish me,’ she whispers, then collapses to her knees, covering her face with her arms. She reverts to Russian, speaking so quickly and with such fear he can’t decipher her words.

He kneels beside her, touching her back gently; she’s shaking, and mumbling something—it takes him a moment to realise that she’s saying her own name, over and over: _Natalia. Natalia. Natalia._

“It’s okay,” are the first words out of his mouth— _comforting, it feels wrong to be doing, his hands are more adept with hurting than healing_ —but they do nothing to help her. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Natalia, look at me,” but even the direct and obvious command only makes her flinch away from his touch.

A sudden thought occurs to him, as sick as it is: He moves his hand to her crimson hair, stroking her head with his fingers, and whispers, ‘You’re a good girl, Natalia.’

At once she stops shivering and sits up again slowly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasps, choking on the words like they’re poison she’s desperate to spit out of her mouth, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .’ The words morph into a sort of mumbled chant, but she becomes absolutely silent as soon as he opens his mouth to speak.

‘You’re a good girl,’ he manages again, hating how empty the words feel in his mouth, although Natalia drinks them in like absolution, like he’s giving her water in a desert, shelter in a storm. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘I disobeyed you,’ Natalia says in an impossibly small voice; her English is shaky and broken, every other word mispronounced. ‘I was supposed to use only my hands and I kicked instead. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s fine,’ he says, touching her hair again, and she leans into the touch, crawling towards him like a moth seeking flame, nestling her head against his metal shoulder. It occurs to him, watching her curled around his arm like a cat, that she might be the first person whom he can remember not distrusting.

 

***

 

He isn’t allowed to watch her train with the other girls, in the rooms where they learn ballet and bullets, but after each session she always seeks him out and shivers her way into his embrace, holding herself against his chest. He can feel her heart beating as rapidly as a bird’s, as easy to crush and to cease the rhythm.

When some of the other girls— _jealous of her prowess, he suspects_ —gather together to hurt her, it’s his title that she screams through bloody lips. ‘ _Pomogi mne, Zimniy Soldat_ _!’_ A harsh cry, but he responds and the girls flee like birds, shadows before a storm.

‘ _Comment t’appelle-tu?’_ she asks him one day when she’s decided she’s going to speak mostly French for the entire day, as practice. ‘What should I call you?’

‘ _Le soldat d’hiver,_ ’ he suggests blankly; it’s the only name he’s been given, the only name he knows. Sometimes he thinks he remembers someone else’s mouth forming another name, presumably his, but the images are distorted and tinged with brokenness. ‘ _Je ne sais pas_ —I don’t know.’

Natalia smiles unexpectedly, radiant and beautiful. ‘ _D’accord, je m’appelle le soldat d’été. N’est-pas?’_ Her use of the masculine form of the word ‘soldier’ is deliberate, he can tell, a slap in the face at the fact that the French word isn’t feminine. She rests her head on his shoulder and he looks down to see her scarlet hair like rust against the metal. ‘ _Nous, nous sommes les soldats de l’année dernière_ _._ ’

The soldiers of the last year. It’s remarkably accurate, once he thinks about it. ‘ _Je n’aime pas les mots. Tu sais?’_ He uses the informal word to refer to Natalia; already she’s become the person about whom she cares the most—not that there are a plethora of options from which to choose.

‘ _Je sais_ ,’ Natalia murmurs quietly. ‘I know.’ She slides her legs to the side and collapses gracefully onto his lap, so much like a feline that he can almost feel the vibrations of purring humming along her spine. She still holds incredible fluidity, liquid and boneless, flexible and powerful.

They’re in his room, then; she refuses to let anyone in hers, not even him. He doesn’t want to invade her privacy, but something feels imbalanced about the situation. Every time he tries to come up with words to explain it, however, he thinks of how imbalanced they will always be— _he has no memories; she leaves no memories_ —and knows it’s pointless.

It’s him she comes to when she’s been punished for killing improperly; she was told to do it quickly, but her target fought back unexpectedly and the result was messy and bloody. Her face is covered in red when she finds him, and bruises shadow her back and arms. Wordlessly, she slides next to him, pressing herself against his side, quiet and catlike.

He doesn’t move, and she doesn’t try to clean herself; her outfit is stained with blood the colour of her hair. Her hands find his and hold on like he’s her lifeline, and he doesn’t know how to tell her it’s the other way around.

 

***

 

Their training sessions together become more regular and less formal as time goes on, until everyone knows it is commonplace to see Natalia Romanova and the Winter Soldier practising drills together in the training room. Natalia has a way of using what her opponent considers their greatest strength to her advantage, which proves to be an invaluable skill. Even Petrovitch comments on her prowess; she is already one of the best Black Widows.

Petrovitch enjoys seeing the two of them work together, and he frequently sends them on joint missions, ‘kills’ as Natalia puts it, although neither one of them complains about the arrangement. Natalia, although she likes to say she prefers to work alone, tends to perform even better when she knows she’s being watched.

Her favourite drills are the ones where he has some sort of weapon and she is defenceless—although not really, because she can just as easily beat him without a weapon as with one. ‘I like fighting with only my hands,’ she tells him while they’re working through another exercise. ‘That way there’s nothing in the way.’

‘Some weapons do get in the way,’ he agrees, and Natalia smiles as she ducks under his arm and flips herself into the air, wrapping her thighs around his neck and using the force of her body to knock him down. She scrambles into a standing position, then reaches down to help him up. He takes her hand and allows her to pull him to his feet.

‘It must be better to have the weapon as a part of you,’ she says, with a meaningful glance in the direction of his arm. ‘That way you don’t have to carry around something that could be taken from you. It’s less risky, I believe.’

‘Maybe,’ he admits, attacking her again so that she can keep practising, ‘but it’s not always a good thing. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve wished it wasn’t part of me . . .’ He doesn’t continue, but Natalia stops moving, and looks at him with her wide, soulful eyes.

‘On the plus side, you can probably deflect bullets with it,’ Natalia says, the corners of her mouth quirking into a sincerely joking smile, ‘but I think you should probably stay away from magnets.’

Time passes swifter than the passage of a knife in someone’s throat; Natalia announces one day that it’s her seventeenth birthday. He doesn’t know what that annotates to anyone else, to her, or even to himself. She kisses him on the cheek and says it’s one more year she’s live through, which is an accomplishment. It rains that night, and he lies in bed awake, trying to remember his own birthdays, or even how old he is, and discovering only emptiness in his head.

Natalia is even deadlier than before. She takes to wearing knives concealed in her boots at all times, and at least one type of poison. Petrovitch is pleased, and calls her his _Red Death_ ; when assessing her, her handler adds that she ‘has expanded her repertoire and will become possibly the best Black Widow ever trained in the Red Room.’

He is proud of her progress as well, and tells Petrovitch so. ‘She learns quickly, and her skill is phenomenal,’ he says, struggling to convey Natalia in a few words. Petrovitch just smiles and moves away.

The next to kill they go on, Natalia pretends to seduce their target, then he steps out of the shadows and slits the man’s throat in one simple motion. When it’s done, he tries to deduce what makes him so uncomfortable about the situation. Natalia is fully capable of handling the situation; there is no doubt in his mind that she would be able to do nearly anything she set her mind on; it isn’t that.

She walks to the window, still in only her underwear, and looks out. ‘ _Penso che siamo buoni._ ’ Italian; they’re in Italy. _I think we’re good._

He barely hears her. the stench of blood has mingled with the scent of her perfume, and it’s difficult to decide which is more intoxicating. He doesn’t resist when she walks back over the polished, stained floor and kisses him, her hands running over his shoulders and arms. There’s still a body at their feet. Her lips taste like the ocean.

Later, he tries to remember if he’s kissed anyone before— _he knows he must have_ —but he can’t conjure an image of a face. One memory keeps drifting across his mind, floating just beneath the murky surface of his memories, lost in the overlapping pictures of blood and death and guns. He stops trying to remember.

 

***

 

It seems like years later, but he knows that it has only been a few months; time is meaningless in Russia, when the snow whirls like angry ghosts around the walls and the icy chill of the air is as deep and bitter as the hearts of the people.

Death comes swiftly to the enemies of Ivan Petrovitch, delivered at the hands of his girls, stained red with the blood of their kills, or by way of his Winter Soldier, cold-hearted and unfeeling. The dance the girls learn is tinged with echoes of death. He learns to dance as well, although in a different way, in a different room, with a gun pointed at his head.

‘Tell me again,” Petrovitch snarls, shoving the barrel against his skull, his finger tensing on the trigger, ‘did you kill her or did she escape? If you killed her—which, for your sake, I hope you did—how many people saw?’

‘ _Ya ne znayu_ _,_ ’ he gasps, the memory of the woman’s terrified face swimming up into the forefront of his mind. _I don’t know._ He killed her with a knife, his preferred weapon, because she was too heavily guarded to use the gun, but before he cut her throat she screamed and kicked at him, her heeled shoes leaving bruises on his chest, and he isn’t sure how many people know. ‘I killed her.’

‘It had better prove true.’ Petrovitch crashes the end of the gun into the back of his head and he collapses to the ground, barely managing to catch himself. His head is full of agony, bright flashes of light bursting in front of his eyes. From somewhere close by he hears a scream.

‘ _Ne bol’no yemu!_ ’

It’s Natalia; _don’t hurt him._ He wants to warn her not to interfere, but she’s already crossed the distance between them in a blur of motion and slid her body into the space in front of Petrovitch, holding up her hands. ‘ _Ne bol’no yemu!_ ’

‘Move out of the way, Natalia,’ Petrovitch commands, but Natalia uncharacteristically refuses to move. Her entire body is shaking, but she stands firm. Anger fills Petrovitch’s face and he grabs her by the arm, dragging her away. She cries out, but he throws her forcefully to the ground and crushes his shoe against her chest. ‘Come with me. You as well, _Zimniy Soldat._ ’

Each word is as lethal as the gun, and he obeys as quickly as he can, pain still flaring in his head with every movement. Natalia follows just as obediently, although her eyes are suddenly full of anguish. Petrovitch leads them into a room and slams the door behind them, then turns to face Natalia, his expression a mask of barely disguised rage. ‘ _Vy doch’ suka,_ ’ he spits viciously, ‘ _ch’to eto bylo?_ ’ The Russian sounds violent and hateful on his tongue: _You daughter of a bitch, what was that?_

 _‘_ _Ya ne imeyu v’vidu, chtoby sdelat’ eto!_ ’ cries Natalia desperately, shrinking down into the chair, her eyes wide and blank with terror. “I did not mean to do it!”

‘ _Suka_ ,’ swears Petrovitch bitterly, slamming both of his fists onto the table, switching to English for his next reprimand. ‘You are not allowed to disobey me, understand? You are mine, Natalia, and you listen to me and me alone. _Gryaznyye shlyukha!_ Say it after me: _Ya prinadlezhu tebe_ _._ ’

I belong to you. He risks a glance at Natalia, her face white and scared, every muscle tensed and hands shaking. Her gaze is fixed on Petrovitch when she mumbles through red lips, ‘ _Ya prinadlezhu tebe_ _._ ’

‘Good.’ Petrovitch’s face seems to relax, then he takes from his pocket a wicked looking knife and hands it blade-first to Natalia. ‘Test this for me, Natalia, tell me if it is sharp enough to kill.’

She flinches when her name is spoken, but takes the weapon and obediently presses the tip to the palm of her hand. No pain shows on her face when she replies evenly, ‘The blade is dull.’

‘Even better.’ With a faint smile, Petrovitch sits down in the chair across from her and folds his arms languidly. ‘Cut your hand with it.’

It is a test of her loyalty, he realises: Natalia can easily have vaulted over the table and cut Petrovitch’s throat with the edge of the knife, but her will lies entirely in the hands of her trainer and handler. Although Natalia is fully able to rebel in a physical sense, her mental independence is stunted, possibly beyond repair, and he is certain that Petrovitch knows it. She can no sooner disobey than she can split herself in two.

Carefully and with great precision, keeping her eyes fixed on Petrovitch’s, Natalia brings the knife to her left palm and presses the point into her skin. Blood wells up from the cut, running down over her wrist. Petrovitch smiles and nods in satisfaction. ‘ _Prozholdit_ _._ ’

Natalia twists the knife and her blood drips onto the dark wood of the table. Her skin is pale against the deep brown surface. He can smell her blood— _rust and salt_ —and the scent disgusts him. Yet he can do nothing more to stop the proceedings than Natalia herself.

Petrovitch licks his thin lips and leans back in his chair, watching Natalia calmly. She digs the tip of the knife deeper into her flesh, expression perfectly controlled, although he can see the pain beginning to show in the depths of her eyes. The shiny metal of the blade is slick with blood, and it stains Natalia’s skin as she twists the knife back and forth, tearing her flesh.

‘ _Zimniy Soldat_ _,_ ’ Petrovitch interrupts, beckoning with one finger. ‘Come here.’ When he walks hesitantly to the table, Petrovitch extends his hand for the knife, which he presses into his metal fingers. Natalia’s blood leaves smears of red on the silver. ‘It’s your turn now, to learn this.’

Every scrap of courage and resolve drains from Natalia’s eyes in an instant, but she wordlessly sticks out her arm towards him. Numbness seems to swell up inside him until all he sees is Natalia, and the blood running in rivulets across her skin. Carefully he sets the edge of the knife against her hand, wedged between the flesh of her thumb and her wrist. He looks up into her eyes, and in them he sees a flicker of something else amidst the fear and pain: trust. He pushes the dull, blood-stained blade into Natalia’s flesh, biting his lips until the salty taste of blood in his mouth rivals the sight of the blood on her hand.

The metal fingers don’t tremble as he carves into Natalia’s hand, the heady stench of her blood overcoming his head almost at once. The look of satisfaction on Petrovitch’s face as he observes the two of them is rivalled by the look of concentration on Natalia’s face as she forces her hand to remain motionless. There are few clean spaces on her skin as he cuts diagonally across her veins, dark blood bursting from them instantly. He can feel her pulse throbbing wildly against his human fingers where he holds her wrist steady.

Time is meaningless, but Petrovitch’s voice slices as painfully through the air as the knife through Natalia’s skin. ‘That is enough. Good work, _Zimniy Soldat_ _._ You have done well this time.’ As Natalia gently takes the knife from him with her uninjured hand, Petrovitch adds in a softer tone, ‘You’re a good girl, Natalia.’

The praise appears to validate the entire occurrence, because Natalia immediately relaxes and curves her lips into a smile. If it’s forced, she hides it well. Blood is still trickling over her arm and onto the table, but she makes no move to stop it or to clean the ragged incisions. He watches silently as Petrovitch rises, his hand lingering for a moment on Natalia’s fiery hair, then walks out of the room without a single backward glance. The blade lies on the table, stained with blood. It would have looked like red paint had it not been for the smell.

Natalia stares at the pool of blood on the table, her eyes unfocused, until he kneels clumsily beside her and touches her shoulder with the hand that isn’t covered in red. When she looks over, the only emotion he can see on her face is assurance. Her loyalty and devotion have been proven, and the aftermath leaves a nearly blissful sense of self.

‘ _Kak dela?_ ’ he asks her quietly in Russian. _How are you?_

Her gaze darts quickly to her cuts, then just as quickly back to him. ‘ _Ya byl khuzhe_ _,_ ’ she says in a low voice, so that the cameras that he knew were hidden everywhere would not pick up her words, ‘ _no mne stydno mne prishlos proyti cherez eto snova_ . _’_ Overall, it was a safe response, if anyone chanced to be listening: _I have been worse, but I am ashamed that I had to go through that again._

The blood is beginning to slow in its flowing from her cuts, but still Natalia does not even attempt to bind or to cover the injuries. His knees are beginning to hurt from prolonged contact with the hard stone floor. ‘Please,’ Natalia says, switching back to English, ‘please do not pity me.’

Disgust is featured more prominently than pity, he thinks, disgust at the world, but mostly at himself. He knows there was no conceivable way he could have devised to avoid hurting Natalia, but the sickening hatred reminds him that a part of him enjoys it. He still likes to make others feel pain, even her. There is a certain feeling of power associated with making a person bleed, no matter who that person happens to be.

Natalia traces her uninjured fingers in the puddle of blood on the surface of the table. ‘ _Zimniy Soldat_ _,_ ’ she says, her voice clear and strong again, although the broken chords of torture linger still, ‘ _Zimniy Soldat_ _,_ ’ and no more needs to be said to convey what she means.

 

***

 

‘They gave me an alias for the Black Widow Programme,’ she tells him when they’re eating lunch, some time later. Time has little meaning where they are. It’s after one of her dance lessons, that much he knows. ‘Natasha Romanov.’

He reaches past her with the metal arm to pick up another serving of food: Soup and bread. ‘Sounds a lot like your current name.’

She takes one of his pieces of bread and bites into it. ‘ _Bolvan_ _._ I graduate soon, then I won’t have to work with constant supervision.’ Her eyes flicker nervously, to make sure Petrovitch isn’t around, an automatic habit, born of years of controlling presences hovering over her head. ‘I’m worried about graduation.’

‘You’ll do fine,’ he says truthfully. He believes it: She’s become, if possible, even more talented. (Killing is easy, but doing it well is an art. She has always been good with art.) He smacks her hand away when she reaches for more of his bread, and she grins. ‘Natalia, you know he believes in your ability.’

Her ability. Not her as a person, but her ability, by which the girls are measured. She looks down at the table, eyes stormy with the thoughts chasing across them; he can’t decipher her. ‘I know. _Je va être bien,_ ’ she adds smugly. His French has improved enough to know she’s saying she will do well.

‘ _Je sais, soldat d_ _’été._ ’

For a moment, her face darkens with suppressed emotions, then she wipes it clean with practised ease and stands up briskly. ‘Let’s go train with those shorter swords again.’

Petrovitch enters the training room while he is watching Natalia slicing targets with her eyes hidden by a blindfold. ‘ _Zimniy Soldat_ _,_ ’ he says, then continues in English, ‘you have formed quite a relationship with Natalia Romanova.’

It isn’t a question, and he struggles to find the best way to respond. ‘She is extremely skilled, and I think she’s—’

‘ _Ostanovit_ _._ Spare me the explanations.’ Petrovitch holds up a warning hand. ‘I do not care what you do with her, as long as she remains loyal to me. Any wavering in her loyalty and I will make you kill her slowly and painfully before I kill you myself. _Ponimayete_ _?_ ’

‘ _Ponimayu_ _,_ ’ he manages, ‘I understand,’ and looks over to where Natalia is now hanging upside down, her fiery hair bright against her pale skin and black clothes. It hits him then that he doesn’t want to lose her. He has the impression he’s lost someone before.

Petrovitch nods impassively. ‘I have come to collect her for her final lesson before graduation.’ He raises his voice and lapses back into Russian for the command. ‘ _Natalia!_ _Idite syuda_ _!_ ’

She does so instantly, obedience showing in every inch of her body and manner as she walks towards them. Petrovitch looks her over, clearly pleased with her appearance. ‘Follow me, Natalia. There is one more thing I require from you before you graduate.’

She casts a look back over her shoulder as she quietly follows Petrovitch out of the room; he can’t tell for certain, but it almost appears that she is crying.

 

***

 

There’s blood on her hands and face when she makes it back to his room, and her skin is pale as ice. She sits on the bed in a daze, a thin sheen of sweat sticking to her body, not bothering to wipe her hands or her face. Her eyes are dark and liquid, full of terror; he cannot help but wonder what has caused her fear.

He washes her hands and face clumsily with the cold water, then sits next to her on the bed. ‘ _Was ist passiert?_ ’ he asks in German. He can’t remember when he learned German, or where, only faint flashes of gunfire and pain and something he can’t name. _What happened?_ Some of him worries about her. Most of him doesn’t want to know.

‘I killed an innocent man,’ she whispers in English; the words no longer carry any hint of the language not being her native one. ‘Not someone who had hurt . . . him.’ She still refuses to use Petrovitch’s name, a trait shared by every other person he’s met, inside the Red Room or outside of it, himself included. ‘He was just there in front of me; he had done nothing wrong. He pleaded with me, begged me, cried and screamed. And I shot him in the head.’

He puts his human arm around her and she leans into him like a cat. ‘When I danced with the other girls, if one of us was tired and could not continue the dance . . . one of the rest of us had to take the gun and . . .’ She tries to finish her sentence, but the words stick in her throat. ‘I am a Black Widow now. I am finished.’

Every word she uses is heavy with pain and remembered agony, but he knows that she has been conditioned well enough that she will still obey every command given to her by Petrovitch or another superior. He wants to comfort her, but verbally he knows nothing, and physically all he can do is hurt and kill.

She is better with both, however; after a moment of silence she pulls him into a kiss, fierce and desperate, pushing him down onto the bed and sitting on top of him, reaching up to take off her shirt. He doesn’t try to stop her. A part of him still hopes that everything will be okay.

 


	2. 3. The Middle

 

 

 

The first time he sees her they lock eyes on either end of the barrel of a gun, blood and terror on her face in equal portions. She is in the way of his target. He knows he recognises her, but where he recognises her from he cannot remember. She opens her mouth, pleading with him. ‘ _Zimniy Soldat, Zimniy Soldat,_ ’ she gasps over and over. Her hair is the same shade as the blood smeared on her cheek and forehead. He points the gun directly at her, pulls the trigger, and—

No, he is not remembering correctly. His recollections are out of order. Time is non-linear in Russia, fluid and confusingly inaccurate. But it’s not in Russia any more. It’s not in Russia; it’s in—

The first time he sees her—but he’s seen her before, this is hardly the first time, so why does he think it is? It is not the first time he sees her—the first—the first time he sees her—the first time he sees—the first time he—the first time—the first—

Time is fluid in Russia, non-linear and confusingly inaccurate. But he is no longer living in Russia, he is in some place else; and besides, he is not Russian, he _knows_ he is not, instead he is—

The first time he sees her he—

Time is confusingly inaccurate in Russia, fluid and non-linear—

He is—

She—

_Natalia._

 

***

 

Words are his continuous and perpetual undoing. He cannot control them the way he can control a gun or a knife, or even the way he is controlled by others. Words do not like to obey or to be controlled, and they especially do not like to obey him or be controlled by him either. He does not understand this; it is a better existence when you are controlled.

Time stretches on like a rubber band, pulled ceaselessly towards its possible breaking point. Petrovitch makes fewer and fewer appearances and sends him more and more missions. Natalia is gone; he is afraid to ask what has happened to her. Sometimes at night he thinks he dreams about her, but when he awakens he always knows better. He does not have dreams.

Petrovitch comes to watch him training, an occurrence which has not happened in along time—yet time is still fluid in Russia, non-linear and confusingly inaccurate. ‘ _Zimniy Soldat,_ ’ Petrovitch says, sounding worn to the bone, ‘come here.’

He obeys instantly out of habit. Petrovitch surveys him, and he feels suddenly as if he has done something improperly. He cannot think of what it would be. ‘I need you to meet someone. Or rather, they need to meet you.’

They walk out of the training room down the hall. The people turn their heads to watch them as they pass, but quickly look away when he locks eyes with them. He and Petrovitch stop at another room; a younger man sits in a metal chair, watching them with cold clear eyes. Terror flashes through him; he knows this man. It seems impossible, and yet he is almost sure of it.

The man has blond hair and there is something in the set of his jaw and the slouch of his shoulders that is dizzyingly familiar. Memories threaten to pierce the clouded surface of the wall built in his mind, but the words being spoken force him back to the present: If he misses a common, the consequences will be worse.

‘This is Alexander Pierce,’ Petrovitch says carefully, watching him instead of the other man. ‘He will be assisting me from now on. You are to listen to him the same way you listen to me. Understand?’

‘ _Ya yego znayu,_ ’ he blurts out, barely able to comprehend what’s happening. The memory swings tantalisingly just out of reach, breathlessly intangible, hopelessly invisible. ‘I know him.’

If he was uncertain before, certainty comes when Petrovitch frowns and shakes his head. But the other man, Pierce, stands quickly and speaks to him. ‘You know me now,’ Pierce says firmly. ‘If you are unable to report to Petrovitch, you report to me. Now, do you understand? Answer me.’

‘Yes,’ he says stiffly. The memory is still there, fading rapidly, another figure with blond hair, but the face is indistinguishable from the murky haze of nothingness. ‘Were you—the war—it—’

‘You were never in a war,’ Petrovitch says angrily, the tone of voice leaving no room for argument. ‘You have seen Alexander Pierce before in this building, but this is the first time you have met him. He controls you as I do.’

He begins to run through the list of facts he knows are not true. _He was never in a war. He has not met Pierce before. He has no will of his own. Natalia Alianova Romanova does not exist. He is the possession of others._ Petrovitch nods in satisfaction and says to Pierce, ‘I’m going to leave him here. He’s yours now, Alex. Be careful. He’s well-trained, but he is still a weapon.’

‘Understood, sir.’ They clasp hands for a brief moment; Petrovitch leaves the room. He turns to face Pierce, waiting. Petrovitch said he was staying—it must mean they have new orders or some other expectation of him. He waits.

Pierce looks around uncomfortably. ‘So, uh. Is there really nothing to call you except what he uses? I don’t speak Russian that well.’

A question he knows; an answer he can deliver. Reassurance trickles through his body like anaesthetic. ‘ _Ya Zimniy Soldat._ ’

‘Okay, maybe we could use English. My Russian is a bit rusty,’ Pierce says. It’s disapproval again, and shame floods over him instantly, enveloping the reassurance. ‘What did you say?’

‘I am the Winter Soldier.’

‘The Winter Soldier, hm. That’s quite the mouthful.’ Pierce leans back in his chair. ‘God, he’s got all sorts of names for you, in Russian and in English and god knows what other languages. How about we stick with just the Asset? I think you’ll agree it sounds better. Of course you will, huh. Have a seat.’

He remains standing for a moment, unsure if he should comply. Pierce is different from Petrovitch, harder to understand. _You are to listen to him the same way you listen to me. You report to me. He controls you as I do._ He sits down carefully.

‘Much better. All right, you’ve been assigned to me. Right. There’s this thing we’ve been meaning to try out—it involves cryogenic freezing, but that’s beside the point—maybe we’ll get into that later.’ Pierce pauses and scrutinises him carefully. ‘You listen to me, right?’

‘Yes.’ The automatic response.

Pierce narrows his eyes. He can feel that boundaries are being tested, limits are being pushed. The thought frightens him. ‘You’ll do anything and everything I tell you to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Excellent.’ Pierce stands and starts to walk towards the door, looking back when he realises he isn’t following. ‘Well, come on. I have a mission for you. What are you waiting for?’

He doesn’t know.

 

***

 

_Life is a privilege granted to the people of this earth, and not all are deserving of such an honour. Humankind is as Ygdrassil, the great World Tree. Each of its branches requires tending and frequent care in order to remain in its eternal state of tenacity. It is therefore our duty to prune the diseased branches of such a tree to ensure it remains healthy and strong._

_Of course there will always be those who attempt to stop us. They are a hindrance, a diseased branch on our Ygdrassil. Our choices are thus: To do nothing, to stand idly by while the gaping gashes fester and infect the fulsome tree, or to cut apart the chaotic section and to allow the remainder of humanity to live. Who but a fool would not choose the second option? Who but a fool would flee from this choice?_

 

***

 

Pierce tells him his missions more frequently now than Petrovitch does. He has not seen Petrovitch except in passing for months; time in Russia has little meaning to him. But he is no longer in Russia— _is he?_ The countries blur together into a tangled image, meaning nothing. ‘You to answer to me alone now,’ Pierce tells him. He obeys. Something tells him that Pierce is in control of him, that he has always wanted to follow Pierce. He does not know why.

He goes on more and more kill missions, barring those only intended to extract information from the targets. After each one, if he has done well, Pierce asks for the mission report and then takes him to the cryofreeze chamber. He instinctively hates and fears the coldness of it; he has the vague memory of ice and wind and pain so tightly interwoven he cannot tell which is which. He has come to associate _cold_ with _hurt._ One of the few reliable ways he can tell he is no longer in Russia is the noticeable lack of the familiar Russian winter.

The first time they test the cryofreeze on him, he panics. The door slides shut, trapping him in the cold steel, surrounded by ice and the frozen heart of metal. He can’t breathe, and he desperately strikes the door over and over, trying to escape, until the temperature drops enough that he stops moving.

‘We’ll work on it,’ Pierce says later. _Disapproval._ ‘It takes some time to get used to this, I guess. Oh well, we can try again, always.’ Pierce knocks his hand on the metal door, listening to the resonating clang of his fist on the side of the chamber. He suspects that Pierce would not be so certain were he the one inside.

The next time they take him out of cryofreeze, Pierce stands in front of him with his arms folded. _Disapproval._ He’s done something wrong. ‘You have a new mission,’ Pierce says, in English. He rarely speaks Russian any more. ‘Étienne Massante. Ever heard of him? You’re to track him down. I don’t care how you do it, but kill him.’

Pierce speaks with resentment but not regret. He guesses from this that his target has committed a personal offence. These kills give him the most pleasure, because Pierce is always the most pleased with him when he returns with the mission report. But something is different now, confusingly opaque. He doesn’t mean to speak, much less in Russian, but the word slips out anyway. ‘ _Pochemu?_ ’

A sudden violent anger clouds Pierce’s face, and he flinches away involuntarily from the blow he knows will fall. Pierce is more fond of fists than knives, but in some ways this is worse. He doesn’t move as Pierce’s knuckles crash into his cheekbone, pain dashing up to make itself known. It stings, but he does not turn his head or touch his face. The punishment will be worse if he acknowledges his pain. ‘Complete your mission. Then we talk. I hear ice is a good remedy for bruising.’

Panic sweeps over him like an ocean wave. The one thing he is allowed to resent is the cryofreeze chamber. Pierce deliberately uses it as a threat, unlike pain or starvations, relics of a different era of being. It is one of the differences between Pierce and Petrovitch—but no, there are no differences, are the two not one and the same? ‘ _Ya zakonchit missiyu,_ ’ he says desperately.

Pierce frowns. _Disapproval._ ‘Speak English, damn it. I don’t have time for this.’

‘I will complete the mission.’

‘Good.’ Pierce sighs and starts to move away, but then stops and looks back, a new resignation contained in the heavy lines of his face. ‘Remember. You are not in control of yourself. You are a weapon, created to help Hydra succeed in fixing the world. Weapons have no minds of their own; they are controlled solely by the hands that hold them. You will aid us in our quest to rebuild the world as it should be.’

‘I will complete the mission,’ he repeats.

Pierce nods in response without meaning it, already on his way out the door, dismissive and careless, with the guards hurrying after him like mice scurrying after a cat. ‘Of course you will.’

He does. They send him to finish the job that Pierce’s men have started. The target, Massante, has been hiding in an airborne ship. He shoots guards and finds the wreck of the destroyed craft. The others have done their work well. He fires repeatedly into the wreckage until he is satisfied no living being is there. He starts to leave.

Movement and a flash of red catches his eye, and he turns. The target is barely conscious, barely managing to move away from the ruin of the craft, leaning heavily on the shoulder of a woman with hair as red as the blood staining her thighs from sharp shrapnel. He aims his weapon at the target, but the woman notices and runs at him and tries to knock the gun from his hand.

She has spirit and courage, but she’s hurt and exhausted. He kicks her in the chest and she stumbles away, her eyes flying open in sudden fear. Her full lips move in wonder. ‘ _Zimniy Soldat?_ ’

He hesitates at the Russian words. Her face is not remarkably familiar, but the way she carries herself is: She retains her grace and fluidity even after what she’s been through. Her hair is the same brilliant red as blood. Scars criss-cross her left palm and wrist. Recognition is plain in her eyes. She is standing deliberately between him and the target. He must complete the mission.

‘ _Zimniy Soldat,_ ’ she repeats; pleading, entreating. ‘ _Pozhaluysta. Vy menya ne pomnite ? Y_ _a_ _pomnyu tebya. Y_ _a_ _bezhal. Vy mozhete ne bezhat_ _’_ _slishkom?_ ’ Her words in Russian are broken and shaky from infrequent use. ‘ _Pozhaluysta._ ’

Conflicting images race and rush through his head: _A wide-eyed young girl telling him her name. Petrovitch handing him a bloody knife. The Italian light falling on a body at his feet. Being told that she no longer exists. She does not._ She does not. She is not real. She must be a ghost.

Russia is full of ghosts. The ghosts of the dead wander freely through the streets, rustling in the wind like the worn paper signs on the shop windows. Snow covers them in a fine white powder, and the ghosts carry the snowflakes on their shoulders with them down the streets and alleys of Russia and on into the world of the dead.

‘ _Zimniy Soldat,_ ’ the ghost-girl pleads again. He raises his gun. She is sprawled over his target, shielding the man with her own body. He fires once and the bullet goes through the flesh of her lower abdomen near her hip into the chest of his target. Blood spreads across the pavement under her. he walks away with a new memory of pitying eyes and a half-smile on bloodied lips. He knows she is not dead. Even he cannot kill a ghost.

 

***

 

Pierce is calm in a deadly way when asking for the mission report. He says he killed the target but that there was a red-headed woman with the target. He lies and says he killed her as well, knowing that Pierce cares nothing for the stories and legends of Russia. It is the first time that he can remember willingly lying to Pierce.

It does not make a difference, in any case. Pierce tells the guards to wipe his memory and to put him back into cryofreeze. ‘And kill that Russian bitch if you can,’ Pierce shouts, sweeping from the room. His last thought before they fasten him down is that not even Pierce will be able to kill Natalia.

Of course, the next time they wake him up and Pierce informs him that he has a new mission, he does not retain any memory of that day, or of Natalia Alianova Romanova at all.

 

***

 

_The life granted to you has been shaped to have a singular purpose unlike any other. You have been given the opportunity to reciprocate the chances bestowed upon you. The gift of life, like other, more material gifts, must be given only to those who deserve it. You will aid us in taking from those who have wrongfully abused this gift, as befits justice. It is your purpose to deliver this justice properly. You are a weapon in the hands of gods._

 

***

 

He starts making a list in his head of all the differences between Petrovitch and Pierce. While Petrovitch was more fond of knives, Pierce tends to use force or deprivation as punishment. While Petrovitch would talk about how well he was trained, Pierce only praises him once he has completed a kill. Even the words they use are different: _kill_ and _mission._ It is confusing, to have two sides at once, and no sides at all.

Although he knows he cannot voice opinions— _he has no opinions_ —a part of him wishes that he could go back to Russia, to how it was before. How it was before—what? Before when? Time has passed, he knows this much, but what amount of time he does not know. He can tell from the wrinkles on Pierce’s face each new time he is taken out of cryofreeze for another kill. He hasn’t seen Petrovitch in a long while. Even the people are different; the girls— _they had another name, but he cannot remember it_ —are gone. The weapons they give him are different and the world, from what glimpses he sees, has changed.

Pierce is always there. The others he is with have no names attached to them, no existence other than entities whom he rarely acknowledges. He pays them little attention; Pierce is the only one who matters, the one he has to please. Everyone else is simply there.

‘You have helped to define the world in which he live,’ Pierce tells him. The forms of praise which Pierce uses are like this, reminding him how he has helped the world. He believes them. ‘You are an asset to our cause.’

Pierce still refers to him as the Asset, although others give him other names. Sometimes Pierce brings in a newspaper to show him, pointing at the headline. ‘Look what they’re calling you now,’ Pierce says, chuckling. _Pride in his possession._ He is never allowed to read the newspapers, but the brief snatches of pictures he sees when Pierce holds them out remind him that the world outside still exists. It is easy to forget this, sometimes.

‘You belong to me,’ Pierce still asks, ‘do you not?’ He always answers yes, and Pierce nods in satisfaction. He wonders sometimes if Pierce expects him to give a different answer. He knows he never will. The thought of being on his own and without Pierce is unfathomable.

He starts making a list of all the things he knows are true. _He is a weapon and his mind is not his own. Pierce controls him. He is an asset to the cause. The cause . . . the cause._ It occurs to him that he is no longer sure what the cause is. To make the world a better place, Pierce says, but how?

Perhaps he does not have memories which correspond accurately to his past, but he can recall the more recent ones. He does not want to remember, but Pierce makes it clear that he is not allowed to forget. ‘This is not torture,’ Pierce explains each time. ‘It is a lesson.’

They let him keep the memories of being tortured, and he knows it is to control him. It doesn’t matter; it isn’t as if he’s going to be leaving them. He has nowhere to go. He cannot leave.

The word _torture_ confuses him, because it reminds him of something that hasn’t happened. He was never in a war, so he could never have been tortured in one, but the memory of pain is acutely there. After a while he stops thinking about it.

He starts making a list of all the things he cannot remember. _The war that never happened. The boy with blond hair and a crooked smile. A name and a face that don’t exist. Red hair and full lips and a smile as sharp as a knife._ They blur together into a disorienting nothingness of images. He stops trying to remember what he’s forgotten, eventually. Better to hold on to what he still has before he loses that too.

 

***

 

_Security is an illusion. We work night and day to further the grounds of science and technology upon which we work, but Hydra cannot complete its mission on its own. The illusion of security is one to which the common man blindly clings, terrified to see how vast the world is without this farce. Once the boundaries of this illusion have been shattered, the world will be able to be enlightened to our true cause. We seek advances in sciences, medicines, electronics, and weaponry. These advances will set apart our race from the blind and the ignorant. We will finish what we started in Germany—the goal is to make the world a better place in which to enjoy that sacred gift, life, with those to whom it has been rightfully given._

 

***

 

The kills don’t get better. Sometimes he goes alone; sometimes Pierce comes along and tells him what to do: This much blood, pain, for this amount of time; slow or quick deaths, and how many. Sometimes the regularity of being told what to do is comforting. Sometimes it is claustrophobic and terrifying. There is no in-between.

Pierce tells him to kill Richard Hayes after finding out security pass codes for a locked vault. He hunts down Hayes and pins him against a wall, while Pierce watches. He pushes the metal fingers of his left hand into Hayes’s throat, into the hollow between the collarbones. His voice rasps through the mask. ‘Tell him the codes.’

Hayes gasps and struggles futilely, eyes stretched wide in terror. Behind him, Pierce watches impassively. ‘I . . . know nothing.’

‘Liar.’ He lifts the man to his feet, drags him around, slams him back against the wall. ‘You were the only person who was told. We need the codes to access those vaults. Now, tell him the codes.’ There is no _I,_ no _me,_ only Pierce and what Pierce requires.

Hayes’s face is turning paler and paler from the pressure constricting his throat. The man’s fingers claw weakly against his vice-like grip, but Hayes still refuses to speak. He cannot decide whether Hayes has stupidity or bravery. Either way, he knows, it will get him killed.

‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ Pierce interjects, the picture of nonchalance. A cigarette unlit from his fingers; his expression is one of boredom. ‘Either you can tell me the codes, or my little weapon can have his way with you. The offer has a limited time frame, see,’ Pierce says casually. ‘You have five seconds to start talking. Five . . . four . . .’

Hayes whimpers, but keeps his mouth tightly closed. He looks over to Pierce, who appears disappointed. _Disapproval._ But it’s directed at Hayes. ‘Three . . . two . . . one. A shame. I’m sure you were rather fond of your fingers.’ Pierce sounds like a mother consoling a child over the loss of a toy.

The inflictions are clear. He holds Hayes to the wall with his right hand; brings his knee up and uses his leg to to hold Hayes in place. The metal hand closes around Hayes’s fingers. Hayes’s breathing is quick and shallow. He bends his wrist and hears the satisfying crunch and snap of bone; Hayes screams and batters pitifully at him with his unbroken hand.

‘Will you tell us now?’ Pierce’s voice is impassive still. The cigarette is still stuck between his thumb and index finger, a silent herald of disaster. ‘Or does the Asset need to break another couple of fingers?’

Hayes is moaning in pain and choking on his inhales, but he shakes his head. Agony and hatred mingle in the man’s watery eyes, although no fear; he respects this. ‘I . . . will tell . . . you nothing,’ Hayes gasps. ‘You _will_ . . . be stopped, I . . . I swear it.’

Disappointment again: Pierce drops the cigarette and crushes it unlit beneath his heel. ‘It is a shame that this had to end this way. I will find my information another way.’ Pierce waves his hand. ‘Finish him; he is of no use to me.’

He looks down at Hayes, crumpled back against the wall, cradling his broken fingers. At Pierce’s words, Hayes lifts his head with great effort and closes his eyes. Ready for death, he thinks. He takes the knife from its sheath. Hayes does not flinch; his face tightens, but he remains firm. From behind him Pierce repeats, ‘Finish him. What are you waiting for?’ The words are sharper than the knife.

The weapon glitters dully in his hand. He doesn’t know why he’s hesitating. Pierce makes a sound of impatience, and the fear of punishment solidifies the decision in his mind. He stabs the knife into the side of Hayes’s neck and drags it across the man’s throat; blood spurts out from the cut arteries and spills onto his hands and the shining silver side of the knife. Hayes slumps back and crumples to the ground like a marionette with all the strings cut at once.

During most of his kills, he is fully conscious of each act. He has heard that in some instances, you go into a sort of trance-like autopilot, not comprehending what you are doing. He comprehends what he is doing. Hayes’s glassy eyes stare up at him. He turns away.

 

***

 

Time is confusing in Russia, because it does not exist, and yet it transcends all else. He knows he is not in Russia, but he cannot shake the feeling that he belongs there. There is something he has left behind in the icy fields of Russia, something he misses terribly but cannot name.

Pierce tells him he does not belong to Russia. ‘You are American,’ Pierce says. ‘You will help us recreate America. It will be a great nation, with Hydra at its head. You are a weapon, and in the right hands weapons can be invaluable. We will supply the right hands, and you in turn will be our right hand.’

He doesn’t know if he wants to be only a hand. It seems a harsh metaphor, given his metal arm. Maybe it’s meant to be that way. Maybe Pierce intends to be harsh—cold and cruel, as unforgiving as the mountains.

 

***

 

‘Do you remember Ivan Petrovitch?’ asks Pierce. They’re in the room where he first met Pierce, only this time the door is locked and he and Pierce are alone. The ambience is claustrophobic and oppressive.

‘Yes,’ he says. He remembers how Petrovitch used him to test if knives were sharp enough, how Petrovitch watched as he cut the throats and wrists of his kills, how Petrovitch left him on the floor with blood staining his face and discolouring his skin. He remembers.

Pierce frowns, an odd look coming over his face. ‘Don’t. From now on, he doesn’t exist. Forever. I’m the only one who commands you, from now on. As far as you are concerned, Ivan Petrovitch never existed. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ he lies. He knows Petrovitch existed.

Pierce notices. ‘You’re lying to me,’ Pierce says flatly, ‘aren’t you?’

‘No, no,’ he says quickly, terrified, ‘I’m not lying. . . .’

‘I hoped to avoid this,’ Pierce says quietly, taking a small device from the inner linings of the expensive suit he always seems to be wearing these days. ‘Hold out your hands. Good. Now, listen to me. Did Ivan Petrovitch ever exist?’

‘Yes,’ he says. Pierce touches his palm with the flat edge of the device and it burns; he instinctively tries to pull his hand away. Pierce shakes his head, and he stops moving. Pain dances through his veins like morphine.

‘Did Ivan Petrovitch ever exist?’

‘ _Yes._ ’ The device touches him again, and he sucks in his breath sharply. It leaves a black mark on his hand, and he can smell his flesh burning. The scent is terrible, like death and rot and fear.

‘Did Ivan Petrovitch exist?’

This time, Pierce keeps the burning device on his palm until he can feel the heat seeping through his entire hand and tracing up his arm. ‘He never existed. The name means nothing to you.’ Pierce removes the device and holds it gently. ‘Say his name.’

‘Ivan Petrovitch,’ he says obediently. His whole arm feels as if it is on fire.

Pierce presses the burning metal into his flesh; it takes all his control not to scream in agony. ‘Say it again.’

‘Ivan Petrovitch,’ he gasps through clenched teeth. ‘Ivan . . . Petrovitch.’

‘Good.’ Pierce clicks a small button on the top of the device and sets it down on the table. The hot metal hisses as it makes contact with the metal surface of the table. ‘We will repeat this as necessary.’ Pierce leaves the device on the table when he exits, the click of the lock louder than usual in the grim silence of the room.

He looks down at his hand, the skin of his palm bright, shiny red with ugly burnt patches curling away from the healthy skin. The sharp pain has melted into a dull, throbbing ache of agony that burns continuously, transcending all else.

 

***

 

_It is our right and our duty to aid Hydra however we can. These actions pale in comparison to what we will accomplish. Small sacrifices must be made in order to formulate a better world. And yet, what are a few lives lost held against millions saved? Who will remember the small and bitter actions used, when Hydra stands at the head of a great empire? Yes, some blood must be spilled for us to become great. Yes, some must perish in order for us to grow stronger. The actions are necessary for the good of the people. We shall become strong. Heil Hydra._

 

***

 

‘You have a new mission,’ Pierce says finally; he sounds tired, shattered, collapsed. ‘You are to take out Director Nicholas Fury. We have sent another group after him and he managed to escape us. I want you to finish him. Do not let him escape. I want him dead. Understand?’

‘Yes.’ He watches Pierce carefully. Pierce gets to his feet and starts pacing the room, hands in the pockets of his expensive business suit. Recently he has noticed that the people who work for Pierce have been changing again, the more familiar faces being replaced with new ones. It can bode nothing but ill for those who have been replaced. ‘I understand.’

Pierce stops pacing and looks at him. ‘When you have finished that one, I need you to complete another mission for me. It may very well be the last for a while. We are almost at a point where we can completely control SHIELD from within.’ Pierce looks at him awry, his eyebrows slightly raised. ‘This one will be important, and likely difficult. Quite possibly the last.’

‘What is the mission?’ Difficult means nothing to him. _Difficult_ annotates _pain._ It has not ceased to affect him physically, but it has ceased to affect him emotionally. He is well-versed in pain.

Pierce sighs and forces his hands deeper into his pockets, staring up at the ceiling in thought. ‘Have you ever heard of Captain America?’


	3. 2. The End

_It’s like forgetting the words to your favourite song_

_You can’t remember, you were always singing along_

_It was so easy and the words so sweet_

 

(Regina Spektor, ‘Eet’)

 

 

 

 

The first time he sees her she locks eyes with him and sends him a silent message: _Leave me alone._ Her eyes are bright and her hair, hidden under her grey hood, is red. She nods and crosses the street, vanishing into an alley, gone from sight.

The threat is clear, and some instinct tells him to obey it. He doesn’t know why, but he feels as if she could be a good fight. He can’t help but hope he won’t be told that she is his next target; something about her frightens him, in a way.

She isn’t his next target, someone else is, someone else who frightens him because he’s familiar, but not complete. It’s a feeling he’s associated with certain people—Pierce, especially. He is close, but not complete. This other man, his target, is close. He is not complete.

The woman with red hair is there, too. Everything is a blur and he tries to erase her from his head, but when everything is over she drifts to the surface and stays there, like a bullet in a wound. He has to get the lead out, or the wound will close over it and the flesh will rot with the metal still trapped inside.

 

***

 

The man on the bridge takes him back to a place he refers to as ‘home,’ although he says it with a hesitance in his voice, as if he isn’t sure that the word fits the place. ‘Welcome home,’ he says, this man who calls himself the name of someone who isn’t supposed to exist, ‘I missed you.’

He wants to say _I missed you, too,_ but how do you miss something when it never existed?

Steve, that’s his name. _Steve._ He thinks he remembers that name, one of the incomplete ones, a shard from the past that never happened. It isn’t that hard to affix the name to the face, although affixing emotion anywhere is more difficult.

‘What do you remember?’ asks Steve. He asks this often, worriedly, cautiously. He speaks always as if he’s anxious he’ll do something wrong. It’s a feeling that he can associate with, because it’s something he’s experienced.

He remembers many things, but he doesn’t talk about most of them. He prefers to listen to others, to gauge the situation, to observe. Mostly he watches Steve, filing away notes of how to act and how to be, and waits.

Sometimes he watches Steve as he does what he’s told to do, interacts with certain people. He knows who they are, for the most part. One of them, the red-headed woman from before, he’s certain he remembers. He isn’t sure from where, but he remembers her.

He mentions this to Steve, when Steve talks about her, and Steve is confused. ‘I think she’s from after your time,’ he says, trying to be off-hand, and failing. ‘Natasha is—well, she’s—yeah, she’s great, but I don’t think you would’ve know her, before.’

Steve calls her _Natasha,_ but he doesn’t think that’s her name. It’s close, but not complete. Something about the familiar inconsistencies makes him think of Pierce, and he stops trying to figure out why the name is different.

But Steve talks to her as often as he talks about her, and he listens to those conversations as much as he can. Mostly they’re meaningless, discussing battles and controls and work and simple things, but sometimes they’re confusing. He tries to make sense of them, to adapt, but he can’t do it.

The woman and Steve have most of their confusing conversations in a room with a railing overlooking it, so it’s easy enough to overhear them, although dangerous. He doesn’t mind the danger; it sings in his blood every time he thinks that he might fall.

This time, Steve’s voice is low and urgent, but not low enough that he can’t hear. ‘I’m worried about it, really,’ Steve says, and the woman nods sympathetically and touches his shoulder with her fingertips.

‘I know you are.’ Her words are kind, although he’s seen her kill as easily as she comforts. ‘I am, too. It’s okay.’

“Doesn’t he seem a little . . .” Steve ends his sentence there, and doesn’t continue; from his vantage point, he can see that Steve is running his hand over his face awkwardly, looking at the ground.

‘He’s “a little” a lot of things, you know, you’ll have to be more specific there,’ says the woman that he knows he remembers, blowing her short red hair out of her face. ‘Steve, sweetie, have you tried the old-fashioned method—might be from before even _your_ time—of asking him what’s wrong?’

‘Do I look like an idiot,’ Steve says matter-of-factly, and they both move away, laughing, out of sight.

He wonders what this woman has done to earn Steve’s trust, so infrequently given. He wonders if perhaps they are together, which would explain her calling him ‘sweetie,’ but he doesn’t think so. Steve doesn’t look completely uncomfortable but relaxed, at ease—he knows her well, has for a long time, but it isn’t romantic. If that’s true, then why, why would they be so close? He doesn’t understand it.

 

***

 

The red-headed woman, the one Steve refers to as Natasha, is clever enough to find him on the roof several days later, where he’s been watching the people wander aimlessly by, hundreds of feet below him on concrete streets. She doesn’t acknowledge him other than to nod respectfully; it’s something he’s seen when two monsters meet, and recognise each other’s nightmares.

‘So,’ she says as an opening line, succinct, which he can’t help but appreciate, ‘the famous Russian assassin, _Zimniy Soldat_ _,_ holed up on a roof hiding from his own best friend. How goes it now, hm?’

He looks up, surprised; he didn’t know she knew his Russian name. His name. He isn’t sure if the other names are still actually his. _No, he knows he has seen her somewhere before, but where?_ ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

She drops down next to him and swings her legs around so that she’s sitting on the railing. He could reach out and push her off and she would fall, although he doubts she wouldn’t be ready. ‘I remember you, even if you don’t remember me.’

But he does, suddenly, crashing down in a wave of images: _A red-haired little girl, eyes too big for her face, a knife in her hand. Her smile is too bright to be real, but still distractingly pretty. ‘Natalia Alianova Romanova,’ she says. It’s in response to the question he’s just asked her._

‘Natalia,’ he says. It isn’t a question, for once.

‘ _Zimniy Soldat_ _,_ ’ she replies. It isn’t a question, either. He’s glad of that.

She leans into his shoulder and they stay on the balcony in silence for a long time, until the sky is darker than the ground and his arms are beginning to hurt, but Natalia is still sitting next to him.

 

***

 

‘I can’t do anything right any more,’ he tells Natalia, his voice rough. They’re sitting on the roof again. They both like to sit there, daring the world they’ll fall, inhaling the breathless scent of danger. ‘I don’t know what to do right. When I do it properly, it hurts. When I don’t, it’s worse.’

Natalia kicks her legs like a child, a little girl, although she is far from anything of the sort. ‘I never told you what we did in the Red Room. I should have.’

‘You didn’t have to,’ he says. Empty words, meaningless, whisked away on a light wind that lifts her hair. His words mean nothing. He means nothing. He is nothing.

‘I can tell you now. It won’t make up for it,’ Natalia admits, ‘but it’s a start.’

He shrugs and grips the ledge with his fingers. Natalia touches his wrist, gently, then looks out across the city and begins to speak, her words still holding that lilting rhythm that he remembers. He remembers her; why can he not remember anyone else?

‘They made us dance the ballet,’ Natalia explains. Now her voice is hollow, and her words are crafted carefully to carry no emotion. ‘We danced in ragged shoes and ripped tights. I knew that some girls would put cotton or cloth in their shoes to protect their feet when he stood on our toes. If they found out we went without shoes at all.’

He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t think he’s expected to say anything. Natalia’s eyes are misted over with memories. He wishes he could be that way as well, but when he tries to think back to that time, he encounters a blank wall. No amount of trying can break it.

‘It was nearly unthinkable pain,’ Natalia continues. ‘Dancing is hard enough on the feet with shoes, and generally they’re padded so that the girls’ feet don’t get too hurt. But ours had nothing, nothing. We were nothing, we deserved nothing, and that was what he were given.’

This he understands: _Nothing._ The feeling that he is worthless, invisible, pointless. _You are an asset to our cause,_ Pierce told him. _Your work has been invaluable,_ Petrovitch told him. At the time he believed them both. He was told to believe them.

Natalia sighs and rolls her neck in a circle, stretching her muscles. ‘God, I’m sore. I miss training with you, sometimes. You were a good sparring partner, a good match. Maybe not the parts where we had to hurt each other, but the practising was fun.’

She’s dangerously close to speaking about the parts he’s been told no longer exist, but she stops there and pushes a small stone off the roof. It falls to the endless streets of the city, far below them. If they fell, it would mean death. Strangely, the thought doesn’t have the same allure as it did. He no longer wants them both to cease to exist.

 

***

 

There are others: Tony Stark. Clint Barton. Bruce Banner. Nick Fury. Thor. Pepper Potts. Jane Foster. Betty Ross. Maria Hill. Sam Wilson. Kate Bishop. He files them into lists in his head: which to trust, which to avoid, which to ignore. Some of them show up more frequently than others, some only appear in times of danger, some are seen once and then never again.

Natalia and Steve are there the most, and with them the two men called Sam Wilson and Clint Barton. He doesn’t remember them, and thinks they are both from the current time, but his mind is so untrustworthy that he doesn’t know.

Sam Wilson he has seen before, when he was still in the control of Alexander Pierce. He was with Steve, as was Natalia. He knows that now. Clint Barton he has never seen, although he gets the sense that he has been around for a while. Clint Barton treats Natalia as if they were friends, more so even, but she mostly ignores him. He understands this.

Names are not difficult, but attached feelings are: It is easy to remember a title and a face together, but the only feelings he has associated with faces and names are pain and terror. Pierce, he remembers, was deliberate in his attempts to align pain and fear with his face and his name.

There was another man, before Pierce, he believes. He can’t remember well. Another man, who spoke different languages and knew Natalia, because in every memory he has of the other man, Natalia is there as well. But maybe he is confusing things again. Maybe it was Pierce all along. That’s what Pierce said, and he was always right.

The man called Nick Fury comes to see Steve often. Steve lives in an apartment, which is small and sparse, a simple place that Steve does not refer to as ‘home’ at any time, only ‘the apartment.’ He lives with Steve now, at Steve’s request, although he knows some of the others do not approve.

Nick Fury does not talk to him, for the most part; his visits concern Steve. He asks questions in a low voice, anxiously glancing at the walls as though they will attack him, leaning into the door frame in a determinedly casual position. Steve answers these questions shortly, aggressive in his words, his arms folded. It is clear he does not want to talk.

Natalia rarely visits; when she does she is never alone. Sometimes she brings Sam Wilson, or more commonly Clint Barton. They talk to Steve for the most part, quick exchanges in the doorways, hasty smiles and brief hugs before they’re gone again. Sometimes they stay for longer, although it’s nearly wordless, quiet and pointless.

‘If I can do anything,’ Steve tells him, and the sincerity in his voice is clear enough to see that he means it, ‘tell me, and I will do it.’

‘You don’t have to do anything,’ he says. Automatic responses are still programmed into his mind, and he says them without thinking. ‘I’m fine.’

Steve considers him with his clear, determined eyes. ‘I know you are,’ he says.

 

***

 

Steve takes him back to the other building, after a while. It’s the one he called ‘home’ when they first arrived, and he acts the same way when he steps through the door, although there’s a certain guardedness in his face as well. He is used to possessiveness, but not protectiveness. It is a feeling he will have to relearn.

The man called Tony Stark is there; it’s his building. There is a woman with him, Pepper Potts. She hugs Steve, and smiles too brightly to be sincere. Steve and Tony Stark converse in hushed tones, then Steve touches his arm gently and leads him to a flight of stairs. ‘It’s okay, I promise,’ Steve says quietly, ‘whatever happens. I just needed to come in and I didn’t want to leave you there. It’ll be okay. Got it?’

‘Yes,’ he says automatically, then changes his mind. He knows better now what he feels, what he wants. He can decide for himself. ‘I think so.’

Steve touches his arm again, the one that’s still flesh and blood. ‘If anyone does anything, tell me and I’ll help you. I’ll do that, but you have to tell me if anything is going on, all right? Please.”

‘Okay,’ he says, and this time the word is his own, his choice, his decision. He can make it be so, and he will.

There are other people, in a room with a large table and several chairs, more than enough. In his head he runs through the list of names: Natalia, Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Nick Fury, Sam Wilson. When he and Steve enter the room, conversation ends and the people turn to watch them. Steve frowns, and they look away hastily, pretending.

‘So now that we’re all here,’ Nick Fury begins, ‘we can furnish our report. After the supposed demise of the Winter Soldier, the media has been going nuts over the whole thing. The Council wants to know what happened, and they aren’t the only ones. We have to decide what did happen and what we’re going to tell them, and let them know as soon as it’s reasonably possible. Rogers, if you could give your report on how he’s been doing.’

Steve whispers, ‘Sit down, and listen. I’m sorry if anything’s confusing; I’m okay,’ then stands up straight and starts speaking. ‘Sir, if I many. He’s been doing well, considering what he’s been through. It doesn’t look like his memories are back entirely, but there’s been a lot of progress . . .’

He stops listening and begins to watch the faces of the other people. Natalia and Clint Barton are sitting next to each other, whispering back and forth, although Steve is still talking. They must be high up in the ranks of this place, then, to be allowed to speak. The others are watching Steve, nodding along with his words.

‘ . . . I think it’s fine. Honestly, sir. I would prefer if he could—if the position we’re in could remain the same. I think it’s the best,’ Steve finishes, and sits down next to him, leaning over to whisper, ‘I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t want to have to be here.’

He doesn’t understand why Steve is apologising, but he complies. ‘It’s fine.’

‘I hate this,’ Steve continues. ‘I hate how they talk about us as if we didn’t have feelings, as if we were their superhero pets to do as we’re told. Sorry,’ he adds quickly, ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘Rogers, with all due respect, your opinions might be a bit biased—your judgement as well,’ Nick Fury says. ‘I get what you’re saying. Romanoff, do you have anything to add to his piece?’

Natalia stand smoothly and nods, crisp and uniform. ‘Sir. I agree with Rogers, that the Winter Soldier should stay with him until further notice. If we want to try to regain his memories, if at all possible, don’t you agree that the best way would be to have him live with his best friend? Most of his positive memories are likely in regards to Steve.’

Nick Fury nods reluctantly. ‘You make a good point, Romanov. We can tell the Council the same story we’ve been feeding the media, then. Moving on, Barton reported that the reconstruction is going well and that the . . .’

‘Come one,’ Steve mutters, ‘let’s get out of here.’

Natalia hurries around the table and stops next to them, her hair swinging down to obscure her face. ‘If you’re thinking of leaving, do. I’ll come with you.’ She grabs Steve’s hand and pulls him to his feet. He follows the two of them, although he doesn’t think he has much of a choice: He doesn’t know where anything is in this place.

‘God, I’m sorry about that,’ Natalia says briskly, as they walk along the corridors, ‘I really didn’t want to say that. But Fury demanded an explanation, whatever, so I had to say something. So,’ she adds, turning to him and switching to Russian, _‘kak dela?_ ’

‘ _Ya v’ poryadke_ _,_ ’ he replies, glad that she’s there.

Steve complains immediately. He gets the sense that this is a common occurrence. ‘No fair, no speaking in languages I don’t understand; if you guys are gonna talk about me, do it in English at least—’

‘It’s not about _you_ , _’_ Natalia says, shoving his shoulder playfully. Their friendship is so easy, but it’s becoming less confusing. He misses that friendship, with Natalia. ‘Besides, we Russian assassin-spies have to keep our secrets. Right?’

‘Right,’ he says, because he wants Natalia to be happy.

Steve sighs exaggeratedly and shoves Natalia back. She laughs, looking more at ease than ever. He doesn’t remember, not quite, but he thinks she used to smile at him too. ‘Natasha, don’t pull your “Russian assassin-spies” lines on me.’

‘Oh, fine.’ She shoves him one more time, then dances lightly out of the way before he can return the favour. ‘No Russian. Since we’re still going without the name thing, should I call you Bucky?’

He’s tired of hearing that name, tired of trying to remember it and failing. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘I mind,’ Natalia says. ‘It’s the future now. We can relearn this, okay?’ Her voice is kinder than it ever used to be. She stops and holds out her hand to shake, and he takes it cautiously. Her fingers tighten around his palm. ‘I’m Natasha.’

Steve is watching, so he goes with the name Steve told him was his. ‘James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky.’ He forces himself not to flinch. He hasn’t made a mistake. ‘It’s nice to meet you . . . Natasha.’

She smiles and lets go of his hand, brushing her hair away from her face. That, at least, is the same. The names are different, but the person is the same. ‘It’s nice to meet you too,’ she says, ‘Bucky.’

 

***

 

Natasha. He doesn’t like it as _her_ name, although he understands the need for a new title. Natalia was the scared girl who fought and killed and sliced deep cuts into her own skin on command. Natasha is the strong woman who fights and listens and doesn’t kill unless she has to kill. They are different people.

‘You knew her,’ Steve says one day, back at the apartment. He’s sitting at the small table and watching Steve make breakfast—eggs and toast and bacon, simple and easy. ‘Natasha. You knew her.’ He doesn’t say _but you didn’t know me,_ but the implication is there.

He thinks about it for a moment. ‘Yeah. I trained her, for a while. We were . . .’ He knows the word _friends_ now, even if he doesn’t like it. Allies, partners, missions? There isn’t a good word for Natasha. ‘I knew her.’

‘That’s . . . impossible,’ Steve says, furrowing his brow and turning away form the stove. ‘That was years before she was born, Bucky. How did . . . oh never mind. None of this shit makes sense.’

‘Language,’ he says, a sudden small fragment breaking free from its confines of nothingness. Steve freezes for a moment, then recovers and scrapes eggs into two bowls, avoiding his eyes.

‘It’s generally okay now,’ he says softly. ‘That kind of thing.’

He could nod and move on, he could ignore it. He could, but he doesn’t want to, not any more.

‘Tell me what else,’ he says.

Steve sets down his fork with a grin on his face and starts to speak.

 

***

 

Clint Barton shows up at their door three days later, covered in dirt and soaked with rain. It isn’t raining.

‘Holy sweet mother of God, Rogers, I don’t know what the _fuck_ is going on, I just need to talk to Nat, stat,’ he gasps, wringing water from his dark grey hoodie onto the carpet. ‘Shit’s really hit the fan, and Fury’s pissed as hell, and Tony’s been threatening kick my ass to France, and I haven’t heard from Banner in, oh, three weeks? Anyway, I was hoping I could use your phone.’

‘Go ahead, Clint,’ Steve says, wincing slightly as Clint Barton drips rainwater down the hall. He stands in the doorway and watches— _Clint_ —as he picks up the phone and dials a number. The phones are different; he knows this. Steve has explained it many times.

‘Aw, _phone,_ ’ Clint says after about five minutes of dialling and re-dialling the same number, ‘she isn’t answering. Well, fuck that. I gotta go in; I’ll have half the team queuing up to kick my ass. Hey, how’s your ex-assassin doing?’

Steve’s face takes on that guarded look. ‘Fine.’

Clint shrugs and starts towards the door again, shaking his head and splattering droplets everywhere. ‘Well, have a good time. By the way, Tony wants to talk to you. Says you’re not answering his calls. I’m not gonna get in the middle of this shit, but you should call him back.’

‘Whatever,’ Steve says. He closes the door behind Clint and sighs. ‘Sorry about that. Clint’s a bit, well, hard to get used to sometimes.’

‘It’s fine,’ he says. He’s thinking of the word _Nat,_ which Clint used, probably in reference to Natasha. How many names does she have, and how many does he have to reconcile in his head? Isn’t one enough? Can’t she stay Natalia Alianova Romanova?

Steve leans against the now-closed door. ‘Hey,’ he says softly. ‘Bucky. Tell me what I can do to help you.’

And he does not say: _You can’t._ He does not say: _I don’t need help._ He does not say: _Leave me alone._ He does not say: _Natalia is the only one who can help me._ He looks at Steve, who is his best friend. He’s always been his best friend. ‘Tell me about everything,’ he says.

Steve does.

 

***

 

They have been friends for years. He remembers this, as Steve tells him. They were in a war together, a war which existed and happened and Steve saved him from Hydra the first time. Steve and Captain America are the same person, and neither of them are bad. During the war, he fell from a train in the mountains and was taken by Hydra. He was brainwashed and used as a weapon. Natalia is Natasha now, and they are the same person. She escaped on her own.

His name is James Buchanan Barnes. Steve calls him Bucky. He doesn’t know if it’s a good name or not. He isn’t sure. Not yet. Steve doesn’t want to call him anything else, and he doesn’t argue. Not because he isn’t allowed to, but because he doesn’t want to.

‘You’re still my best friend,’ Steve tells him, sitting across from him at the table. Their breakfast is untouched, getting cold. The stove is probably still on. Steve sounds like he is saying it to himself.

‘What about Natasha?’ he asks.

Steve smiles. ‘She’s my other best friend.’

‘What about Sam?’

‘Okay, you’re my best-best-friend.’ Steve rolls his eyes and taps his fork against the ceramic plate. It makes a sound that’s too loud for the kitchen, and he flinches. Steve frowns, but doesn’t move. ‘You’re not helping.’

He does not say: _Is that a good thing?_ ‘You must be pretty bad, if you need my help.’

Steve grins at him. ‘Look at you, making jokes about me already. That’s how I know you’re gonna be okay, you know. You always make fun of me, Bucky. I guess it isn’t that hard, huh.’

‘Not really,’ he says. He remembers what Steve is saying, piece by piece, like a broken puzzle. He can put it back together; he refuses to believe he cannot. He _will_ put it back together.

Sam Wilson, Steve’s other other best friend, stops by occasionally. He’s confusing, but not in the same way things used to be confusing. Now they’re just confusing because the new world is confusing. He’s been exposed to the internet, to telephones, to weapons, all of that, before. But he was never allowed to be curious.

‘So pictures are all in colour, now,’ he asks Steve. Something else he thinks is different.

Steve looks up from what he’s doing; he’s been drawing something on a scrap of paper. ‘Yeah, all in colour. You wanna go see one or something? I bet I could get a good discount, for being the hero of the nation.’

It takes him only a fraction of a second to realise it’s a joke, but maybe it’s more than that. ‘Yeah,’ he says. It’s true. ‘I kinda do.’

 

***

 

He tries not to dream, because when he does, the dreams are terrible. Sometimes his mind conjures images that he’d much rather forget, mostly of killing. Not every kill was as simple as a bullet to the head from a distant point, seeing the familiar jerk and collapse. Some were far more up close and personal.

He dreams of cut wrists, blood bubbling from torn veins, bruises on skin patterned with knife wounds, the soft skin of throats and faces, cut apart. At first he tries to keep his dreams to himself, but eventually he gives up— _‘You can’t give up, or you’ll be a failure,’ Pierce tells him, ‘and the world will have no use for you’_ —and tells Steve. It’s what Steve told him to do. The inherent loyalty to a superior is still there.

‘I have dreams,’ he says, stubbornly ending his sentence there. They’re sitting on the couch in Steve’s apartment, which is another confusing thought because didn’t he used to have another apartment, only that one was much smaller? Everything about him seems to follow that pattern.

Steve leans his head back on the couch and turns to look at him. ‘About stuff they told you, or things that are true?’

Even that is confusing, because the things they told him were meant to be true. ‘Things that are true,’ he decides to go with, ‘always things that are true.’ But even that is a lie, isn’t it?—because he dreams about the war, a war of which he was never a part.

‘That’s the hard part, I guess,’ Steve says. He guesses a lot, which makes it clear that he’s been in a similar situation—one where he doesn’t know his own mind. ‘How do you get rid of things that are true?’

‘Maybe you don’t,’ he suggests, because it’s what Pierce would have wanted him to say. He knows now that Steve is not Pierce, but they look similar and act similar, and it makes no sense. And he still gets the two of them confused sometimes.

Steve shrugs and sits back up, crossing his legs. ‘I would like to believe that you can get rid of them, or at least change them so they aren’t so bad. What kinds of things do you dream about?’

This, this must be a test, he knows that much. It’s a test, and he has to get it right. If he said he dreamed about bad things, then mentioned killing, they would hurt him so that he never said that again. He doesn’t want that to happen, because somehow, he wants the person to whom he’s talking to remain free of those awful experiences.

‘It’s not that bad, really,’ he says slowly, trying to see how Steve takes his words, ‘mostly just . . .’ Not the war; he was never in the war. Not Steve from before; he never knew Steve from before. Not his family or his life; he never had either of them. ‘Things. I don’t know.’

The look on Steve’s face would be heartbreaking; so lost and helpless. ‘I’m not gonna hurt you, pal. You know that, right?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ he says, not really believing it, but knowing he has to give what is wanted, ‘yeah, I know that.’

 

***

 

Natasha finds him on the roof of the tower a month and a half later. Time is no longer fluid but fixed, linear, progressing. He still likes to go to the roof, to think and to try to forget about everything. It isn’t a bad thing, to forget, when you let yourself do it. When it’s forced, it isn’t the same.

‘How are you?’ she asks. She stands behind him, her hair— _now longer but still as red as blood_ —flowing in the light wind. ‘I hear Steve’s been keeping you all to himself. He never did know how to share.’

‘I’m fine,’ he says. He is no longer surprised to find that it is true.

 

***

 

‘Did it hurt?’ asks Steve, fingers tracing over the metal links, touching the dull red star emblazoned on his shoulder. Steve’s fingers linger on the edge of his wrist, then tighten around his hand and hold on. ‘Losing the arm, I mean. Did it hurt?’

‘A little.’ He watches Steve touching his arm, refusing to allow himself to miss the sensation of touch in his skin, singing there like the sharp cut of a steel knife. It’s a lie; what he can remember points directly to the fact that it was complete, unspeakable agony, but he doesn’t want to voice that part.

Steve bites his lips in that stupid nervous habit of his, the same way he used to, before; it’s a fleeting memory, uncertain, but it’s there. Steve slips his fingers over the metal and caresses it like it’s sacrosanct ground. ‘Is it permanent?’ asks Steve, a light note of uncertain nonchalance in his words, and they’re so familiar that he feels like he should remember them, should know where they’re from, but he doesn’t have a clue. Steve looks up and cautiously lets his hand rest on his palm, threading their fingers together.

Somehow the right words come to him, borne out from the endless darkness of his mind, where his memories are supposed to be hiding. ‘So far,’ he says quietly, and from the smile that bursts onto Steve’s face he knows he’s done something right.

 

***

 

Steve takes him out to dinner, in a restaurant that isn’t that big, with normal lighting and a quiet ambience. He thinks he should probably not be surprised that Steve does these things; he is, from what he’s remembered, a remarkably thoughtful person.

‘I know I’ve said this a million times,’ Steve says, watching him from across the table, ‘but I’m really glad that you decided to stay with us. With me. It means a lot, Bucky. It really does.’

He nods and looks at the surface of the table. ‘I’m glad I stayed with you, too.’

Steve’s face lights up in a grin, and he leans forwards to put his elbows on the table in a blatant disregard of manners. ‘You’re my real best friend. Natasha and Sam and everyone, they’re great. But you, Bucky, you’re my best friend.’

There are many ways to respond. The one he chooses is his favourite. He can make choices like that now. Natalia is gone, the old Steve Rogers is gone, the Winter Soldier is gone, and there is only him. Him and Steve.

‘You’re my best friend, too,’ Bucky says.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](spacestationtrustfund.tumblr.com).


End file.
